By the end of that same year the
then Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, had issued Promissory Notes to the eventual total value of €31bn to two
already insolvent banks, Anglo Irish Bank (€25.5bn) and INBS (€5.5bn).

In other words, in 2010 the Finance
Minister took the entire tax take from every worker and every company in every
industry in the country, plus death duties and other such sundry taxes, topped
it up with over €4bn from our National Pension Reserve Fund, and gifted it to
the failed creditors of two failed banks.

All the above was done without any
reference to us, the people who are now landed with paying this debt; all the
above was done without any real reference even to those we elected to represent
us, across all parties and none; it wasn’t fast-tracked, it was railroaded
through the Dáil.

HISTORIC JUDGEMENT BUT CURRENT PAIN

It’s important to note also that
this isn’t just stale news. The €31bn that was created for those two insolvent
banks by our Central Bank was of course never going to be paid back, a fact
that was well known at the time.

The reason it was done was twofold:
1) The ECB had no structures in place to deal with insolvent banks (it does
now, far too late for us), and 2) In the absence of such structures, it feared
a domino effect if those two banks were allowed collapse, thus colluded with
the Irish government and the Central Bank of Ireland to circumvent its own rule
on bailing out insolvent banks and accepted the Promissory Notes as collateral.

That €31bn must now be taken back
out of circulation by the Central Bank of Ireland. It’s being done in chunks.

Originally, starting in 2011, it was
scheduled to occur before March 31st of every calendar year, and the
new government did in fact destroy €3.1bn that year. Then came Michael Noonan’s
infamous Promissory Note deal, in February 2012, when both Anglo and INBS (now
the IBRC) were eventually and inevitably wound up, and with it a new schedule.

In 2014 our Central Bank destroyed
€1bn, in 2015 it was €2bn, and so far this year, another €1bn. That means a
total of at least €6bn has now been destroyed (I know, you’d expect that
information of this magnitude and import would be broadcast loud and wide – it’s
not), which leaves €25bn still to be taken out of circulation.

All that €31bn will be borrowed, all
will be destroyed, all will have to be repaid – plus interest. Nothing Michael
Noonan did in his ‘deal’ changed a syllable of that.

A LEGACY THAT HAD TO BE CHALLENGED

That is the legacy that Michael Noonan
and his government partners are leaving our children, and their children. That is
why Joan Collins took up David Hall’s court challenge to the legitimacy of
those Promissory Notes, that is why yesterday was so important.

That the Supreme Court would decide,
unanimously, that all this isn’t just legal, it’s constitutional, is alarming
to put it very mildly.

Under this ruling, a sitting
Minister of Finance can basically decide to place an unlimited amount of debt (€31bn
just happens to be the total in this instance) on the people, not even a
pretence at debate, no checks and balances, and that’s ok? This is democracy?

BALLYHEA SAYS NO

The Ballyhea Says No campaign has
always been about trying to alert people to what’s happening, trying also to
right the wrong done to us not just with the Promissory Notes but through the
entire bank bailout debacle, the threats, bullying and blackmailing from
Europe. Our focus has been on the political side, working hard to get
politicians together from all parties and none who will then take this fight to
Europe. We will continue that battle, but we will also continue those like Joan
and David who take the legal route. Perhaps their next option is the European
Court of Justice, but that will be for them to decide and I know already of one
MEP at least who will join them in that exercise!

Whatever they decide, they will have
our support. Meanwhile we continue our efforts to bring another Private Member’s
Bill to the Dáil, while simultaneously preparing a Written Declaration in the European
Parliament.

This battle is lost, but then again
the 1916 Rising wasn’t exactly a victory either; look how that turned out. We persevere,
spirits still high.

This is a story that we in the Ballyhea
Says No campaign have been tracking for some time and believe me, there’s a lot
more to it than what you’ll read in this article, or indeed in any of the
similar articles that have appeared on this issue over the last few years in
publications such as the Irish Times. It all stems from the bailout of Anglo Irish
Bank and Irish Nationwide Building Society in 2010, the creation of €31bn using
the Promissory Notes, €31bn that now the ECB insists has to be taken back out
of circulation.

What’s being reported is this:

The Central Bank is selling off the IBRC bonds
(what we call the Promissory Note bonds, the fruit of Michael Noonan’s 2013
sleight of hand when he replaced the Promissory Notes with those sovereign
bonds) in tranches of €500m, for a profit;

That portion of the IBRC Promissory Note debt is
then ‘cancelled’.

In 2014 the Central Bank of
Ireland sold off two such bonds; in 2015 they sold four more, a total value of
€6bn, from which sales stem the profit. With the ‘cancellation’ of those bonds,
the value of the IBRC debt has fallen from €28bn to €22bn.

All fine and dandy, and all true.

But it’s not the full truth, nor
even the half of it.

What’s NOT being reported is
this:

The purchaser of the Central Bank IBRC bonds is NTMA,
our National Treasury Management Agency;

They are buying those bonds with money they’ve
raised from the markets – borrowed money, on which we are now paying interest
and which in time, will have to be repaid in full;

The ‘profit’ the Central Bank of Ireland is
making is thus made from the NTMA – one national agency making a ‘profit’ from
a transaction with another national agency;

That ‘profit’ goes to the exchequer, but it’s
money that has already been borrowed – by us;

And the €500m that the Central Bank of Ireland also
receives from the NTMA, the means by which the IBRC debt is ‘cancelled’? It’s
destroyed, taken out of circulation.

·So, to summarise:

The National Treasury Management Agency uses a
borrowed €680m to buy a €500m IBRC bond (they’ve increased in value since they
were issued three years ago – don’t ask!);

The Central Bank of Ireland destroys €500m of
that €680m, per the terms of the Michael Noonan Promissory Note ‘deal’, to
satisfy the ECB (it thus destroyed €1bn of borrowed money in 2014, then €2bn in 2015, is holding €22bn awaiting the same fate);

It gifts the balance of €180m to the
exchequer – the profit.

The question then – why doesn’t
the Sunday Business Post report all this? Why not the Irish Times, the Irish Independent,
the Irish Examiner, RTE – anyone? Why don't they look behind their own headlines and find the full story?

Today is the exact 100th
anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Those men and women who took to the streets of Dublin
fought for ideologies that I don’t think our current political leadership don’t
even begin to understand. Freedom? Independence? Casting off the yoke of a
foreign empire? Control of your own destiny as a nation, your own finances, your
own decisions?

They have surrendered that hard-fought
freedom, that blood-won independence; in allowing themselves be bullied and
browbeaten into accepting debt that was never ours, debt such as the €31bn Promissory
Notes, they have saddled their own people with another yoke, another empire.

Wednesday, 24 February 2016

On Monday, February 22nd
2016, the Supreme Court resumed its hearing of the challenge by Joan Collins TD
into the constitutionality of the €31bn Promissory Note debt.

First on his feet, to
finish where he had left off on Thursday last and to summarise his argument,
was John Rogers SC, acting on behalf of Joan. He had been granted that extra
time – ten minutes – by Chief Justice Susan Denham. John being John, ten became
15 became 20, until eventually the amiable Susan’s gentle reminders took effect…

He used that time to good
effect however, reinforcing his already forceful argument of last Thursday that
in assuming sole responsibility in signing off on the Promissory Notes that put
Ireland on the hook for €31bn of debt, then Finance Minister also assumed a responsibility
that exceeded his authority and his government’s authority under the Constitution.

BALLYHEA SAYS NO CAMPAIGN

To digress for a
paragraph: This is the same €31bn the ECB insists that under rule, and because Anglo
didn’t come good on those billions, must now be taken back out of circulation. They
have ‘called in’ the government Promissory Notes, so to speak, and that €31bn
is currently being borrowed in stages by our National Treasury Management
Agency, given to our Central Bank and being destroyed by them. Already €6bn has
been borrowed and destroyed, €2bn of that last year alone, with €25bn still
being held and awaiting the same fate – those are 25 billion good reasons why
we in the Ballyhea Says No campaign will this Sunday complete five years of
weekly marching and continuous campaigning, in parallel with what Joan Collins,
David Hall and John Rogers are doing in the Four Courts. If we lose, that
entire debt, plus the interest, is loaded onto the shoulders of future
generations – in 2016, this is not the legacy we want to leave our kids. It’s a
fight we may not win, we’re aware of that, but at least we’re ENGAGING; our government
surrendered without even an argument, never mind a fight.

ARTICLE OF FAITH

Anyway, back to John
Rogers. Article 11 of the Constitution is what John using to underpin his
argument, which goes as follows:

All
revenues of the State from whatever source arising shall, subject to such
exception as may be provided by law, form one fund, and shall be appropriated
for the purposes and in the manner and subject to the charges and liabilities
determined and imposed by law.

Because the Promissory
Notes were never voted on by the Dáil, never mind approved ‘subjectto the charges and liabilities determined and imposed by law’.

There are no exceptions
to this, he argued, and on Monday, used several examples from the German Courts
and the German Constitution (which is similar in that context to ours) to
bolster his argument.

SECOND HALF

The ball was then in
Michael McDowell’s court, also a Senior Counsel, also a former Attorney General
but given that he is also a former Minister for Justice, trumping Mr Rogers in
the ‘honours’ department.

He is a formidable
debater, is Michael McDowell, more fluid in his delivery than the ultra-painstaking
John Rogers, more casual even in his stance, lifting his knee occasionally to
rest against the lectern from which he was speaking.

He began early with a
claim that an opinion on the Promissory Notes expressed in the Dáil was
automatically the opinion of the Oireachtas and thus satisfied the conditions
of Article 11. Maybe I misheard, maybe I misinterpreted, but those around me
were of the same opinion I had reached, that as an assumption on which to base
the power of one person to assume any debt for any length of time on behalf of
a nation, this was a hell of a stretch!

He then went on to
outline what he saw as legal precedent after legal precedent for the Promissory
Note, including (on a couple of occasions) the pay and pension of the Judges
themselves, set in Statute but the amount for which is not set in stone.

HOLD YOUR TONGUE, BITE
YOUR LIP

The way the Court seems
to operate is that each side gets their own time to argue their case, so just
as Michael had to sit through John’s presentation, so John now had to bite his
tongue as Michael took his shots.

Those of us watching all
this though had our own thoughts and I couldn’t help wondering – NONE of the
precedents presented by Michael McDowell matched the Promissory Notes, not in
the scale of the exposure, not in the fact that all those other examples would
have been debated in the Dáil at some stage, not in the fact that Brian Lenihan
had time and opportunity to present the Promissory Notes to the Dáil for its
consideration but didn’t (for whatever reason). He brought up for example a
putative tunnel connection between Ireland and Wales, the cost for which would
have to be committed to by one Dáil but the annual payments for which would be
passed on to future generations, without the power to reject those payment –
surely though the original ‘spend’ would have been debated and approved by the
Oireachtas, no?

While none of us could
voice those questions, the same doesn’t apply to the Judges and boy, did they
give Mr McDowell a going over, so much so that on occasion he was reduced to
near silence, had to concede he was unable to give an answer. As Michael was
arguing at one stage that the Dáil, which hadn’t had any opportunity to debate
the Promissory Notes, could merely give the nod to the subsequent payments (the
annual destruction of money), Judge Charleton interrupted with an interesting
analogy, ‘So in household budget terms, the Oireachtas can debate the groceries
but not the mortgage?’.

HOSTAGE TO FORTUNE?

There was one argument
put by Mr McDowell that may have major significance later, when this case ends
up in the European Court of Justice (as I think is inevitable, should it be
lost). Monetary financing – direct central-bank funding of government
expenditure – is expressly prohibited by the ECB. In his presentation Mr McDowell
reiterated something that had been said during the High Court hearing, that the
instant the Promissory Notes were issued they became capital, an infusion of
finance into the then insolvent Anglo Irish Bank. This capital came from the
Emergency Liquidity Assistance fund, those funds drawn down by the Central Bank
of Ireland. What was that if not monetary financing? What was that if not a
blatantly illegal use of a fund that was to be used – explicitly, by ECB rule –
ONLY for solvent institutions?

Just over a month ago a
group of us from the Ballyhea/Charleville campaign, in company with two TDs and
an MEP (Joan Collins, Catherine Murphy and Marian Harkin, respectively), met
the new Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, Phillip Lane, and he argued
that the Promissory Notes made Anglo solvent – if the Promissory Note and the
capital injection were simultaneous, how can that be?

SMALL PRINT…

This is just a very brief
overview of what was an intense four-hour presentation, and just a layman’s
overview at that of what were very detailed legal arguments, so please bear
that in mind.

As outlined in the report
of the first day’s proceedings, this is a case of enormous significance for us
all. A win for Joan Collins and it means the Promissory Note debts were
unconstitutional, that debt illegal; a loss, and it means that any and all future
Ministers for Finance can assume – on his her/his own – responsibility for any
amount of debt for the State. That’s kind of important like…

For those of us who have
been following the case there will be yet another day out in the Supreme Court,
when John Rogers will have his final say. Then will come the deliberations, the
seven Judges going beyond what was presented to them and digging out their own
precedents, using their own considerable separate and joint experience.

Whatever people’s own
experiences of the lower courts in this country, where the administration of ‘justice’
can be haphazard at times (depending on the individual judge, even the mood on
that particular day), the Supreme Court is impressive, very impressive.